Review form Hello Yellow Room.
Emma returns to Camp Nightingale fifteen years after her bunk mates vanished into thin air. Now she's back at camp, in the exact same cabin she occupied all those years ago, haunted by her own lies and deceptions.

So, to be honest, I slogged through the first half of this book. I love that Riley Sager’s calling card is using overwrought horror-trope landscapes to create something fun and fresh out of the rabble, but summer camp was never my favorite. Not a huge Halloween fan. I’m a big 1990’s slasher film fanatic, so Sager’s Final Girls really spoke to me from the very first page. The Last Time I Lied was a test of my endurance.

The characters are flat, especially Emma. I hate when characters are artists and the author has to describe abstract visual pieces to the readers. It’s never good. I felt distracted by the separate timelines, between Emma’s current stay at Camp Nightingale and her flashbacks to fifteen years prior. For a book spending a ton of time detailing female friendships, there doesn’t seem to be any meat or nuance to their relationships.

That ending, though. I am shook.
Multiple dumb red herrings and pointless sub plots aside, the ending is pretty fantastic. I love a good reversal, and this one was a gleeful surprise. I want to speak more of the final few chapters and the underwater setting that will haunt my dreams, but I don’t want to give away the actual best part of the book.

The best way to describe this book would be Gone Girl lite, so if that perks your interest, give it a try. But hang in there until the end, I promise it’ll be worth it.

Big thanks to Net Galley for the ARC in exchange for an honest review, and also to my boyfriend for buying me a copy because he knew how much I loved Final Girls.

I loved Sager’s first book and was eagerly awaiting his latest effort. It didn’t disappoint. I enjoyed the summer camp setting and I didn’t see the ending coming. I highly recommend this title to readers that like creepy thrillers.

I just couldn't get into this book and did not relate or engage with any of the characters. The girls camp plot did not appeal to me and the "am I seeing ghosts" flashback of the main character had me rolling my eyes. Too many characters to keep track of and none of them really served a purpose in the climax of the story. This one was a dud for me.

Emma returns to the camp where 3 girls disappeared 15 years ago right from her cabin. She was the last to ever see them. That night still haunts her and her paintings and nothing was ever discovered about the missing girls. Now 15 years later the camp is once again open and Emma has returned to stay in the very same cabin with 3 young girls.
Does history repeat itself and how much is Emma's fault?

LOVED IT! Check this one off as a great beach read chock full of twists, turns and lots of questions. Renowned artist Emma Davis has spent the last 15 years painting the same thing over and over-- giant canvases depicting dark, scary forests. Under the layers of paint on every canvas, Emma has hidden a secret: a painting of the three girls who disappeared at her prestigious summer camp.

The night that Vivian, Allison, and Natalie disappeared was life changing for Emma. They were her cabinmates and friends, and when Viv slipped out the door into the night with a finger over her lips and then never returned-- Emma felt responsible for the their disappearance. When camp director, socialite Francesca Harris-White invites Emma back for the camp's reopening 15 years later, Emma seizes the chance to investigate their vanishing and learn what really happened to them. But all is not as it seems. As Emma unravels the mystery of why the girls disappeared and confronts the ghosts of her past, Emma learns that the truth is more complicated than she could ever have imagined.

I could totally see this one being a movie! I felt like I had to read it after so many people recommended it, and I'm glad I did! I loved the summer camp setting and the relationships were so complex and interesting. At first, I thought some of the explanations for what happened were a little bit weak but by the end, I was sold.

Great book... This was the first of Riley's that I've read, and I can't wait to read more!

This book kept me guessing. I loved the past/present narrative, it kept the suspense going!

This was an amazing read! I had seen people posting rave reviews about this book in several places, so when I saw this book come up with the option to read it, I knew I had to have it! This book was a wonderful thriller that kept me on the edge of my seat and needing to know what happened and why. Around every corner there was either a closed door or another turn, never letting you get the whole story until the end.

Here's how it begins: Emma is 13 years old with a barely functioning alcoholic mother and an inattentive father. One summer she is sent off to summer camp and due to no one telling her, she arrives late. She is the last one added into a cabin with older girls. When the leader of their pack, Vivian, begins hiding secrets and sneaking around, Emma wants to join in but is kept out of the loop until one night when all three girls go missing.

Here's how it continues: Emma is now 28 and a good artist with her first gallery showing. For fifteen years she has been making "the girls" (as she calls them) disappear over and over. She draws ghostly figures in white dresses and then slathers on layers of textured paint - trees and forests to hide them in. At her showing, she sees Franny Harris-White who's come with a proposition for Emma.

Come back to summer camp for one more summer and spend the summer as an art teacher to young girls, staying in the same cabin where it all went wrong 15 years before. After all, it couldn't possibly happen twice, could it?

I thought the book was good. I liked Riley’s first book better, but the book kept me interested and wants to know the lies that had been told. I thought the ending was good but annoyed by how the main characters accusations were never questioned. Def recommend

Wow wow Wow. Only a handful of books I’ve read have physically given me goosebumps, and the final pages of The Last Time I Lied did not only that but also sent a shiver down my spine.

This book was my favorite type of mystery/suspense/thriller - one that kept the mystery, eeriness, suspense and a little something sinister simmering under the surface throughout the entire story. I think this story also in a way hit close to home, because I couldn’t help picture Camp Nightingale as a compilation of all the summer camps I’ve attended in middle school and high school, bringing the story and setting a little more to life.

Also that ending - just when I was settling into what I thought would be a quick, anti-climatic answer to one of the story’s biggest mystery plots, the author steps in with a twist that leaves a satisfaction I haven’t experienced in a mystery/suspense story in a long time.

Thank you Net Galley for the free e-copy of this book, which is in exchange for an honest review. All thoughts in this review are my own

Amazing book! I couldn't put it down. So much suspense and twist and turns that I couldn't wrap my head around quick enough. I LOVE this author and he is becoming one of my clear favorites. I can't wait to see what else he has in store. I loved the back and forth story lines (past and present) and it didn't detract from the story at all.

I absolutely loved Riley Sager's new book! (Maybe even more than Final Girls...) Suspense, mystery, summer camp? Everything you need for a fantastic summer book. I really appreciated the character development and felt like I knew the characters, which doesn’t always happen in suspense novels. Well done!

I was late to the party on this one. It came out at the beginning of July and I just got around to it. Better than the ones I've had for over a year I haven't read. So many books and I just keep buying more because duh. I enjoyed Sager's first book, Final Girls, so of course this was a no-brainer.

I have to say I enjoyed Sager's debut more than this one. That's not to say this a bad book, I just liked the first one better. Poor Emma. She's been haunted since she was a camper as a teenager and her three cabin-mates disappeared. No one knows what happened to them though the gossip and rumors are a-plenty. Emma decides to play amateur detective once she returns to camp, only this time, she ends up having "help." Emma is sharing a cabin with three teenagers who find out who their roommate is and then stuff happens.

Meanwhile, there's a bunch of creepy creepy things going on such as a mysterious camera, strange flashes of lights and suspicious characters, and the lines between what's real and what's not start to blur. There's also a maybe love interest but it's definitely not the main focus of the story.

I liked how the book discussed memories and what we think happened and what really happened. The ending was both predictable and yet not. I completely missed it, but when revealed, it made a lot of sense. I thought the bad person was someone different so kudos to you Mr. Sager.

All in all, it's a good book. There was just something missing from it that would have propelled it from good to great. Whether it's too many different suspects or unlikeable characters or something else, I am not sure. I am, however, positive this author will be a must read for many more books if he keeps it up.

Many thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for an advance copy of this book.

I LOVED sagar's debut, but this fell flat for me, but I will still like to recommend it if you're a fan of the genre as it may just not have been my cup of tea,

I LOVE THIS AUTHOR!!!! Final Girls was one of my top reads of 2017, and I expected so much from this book. Let me tell you I was not disappointed in the slightest! It was very unique and I was enamored from the very first chapter. I love when a book can drag you in and make you not want to stop until the very end, and was absolutely one of those. Please just pick this one up, you will not regret it!

The characters were extremely unreliable, which I find prefect for a psychological thriller like this one. I questioned every one and their motives until the very end. Emma was so questionable, I didn’t know what to make of her throughout most of the book.

I feel like this book would make an excellent horror movie if done correctly, the setting the characters, the plot, everything just screamed make me a movie! I enjoyed the sections where the past was explained more, they were scattered in just the right places to bring everything together. I was creeped out a lot of the time, and love that feeling. I can’t wait for the next book by Riley Sager.

If you liked Riley Sager's Final Girls -- which I did, mostly -- you'll be pleased with The Last Time I Lied (Dutton, Penguin). I was, mostly. Painter Emma Davis is haunted by her short stint at Camp Nightingale 15 years ago. Her three cabin mates disappeared one night, never to be seen again, and the camp had to close. Now she paints her lost friends' likenesses in every large canvas, but then hides the girls with brushstrokes of dark forest scenes. When Francesca Harris-White, the wealthy owner of Camp Nightingale, decides to reopen the camp for scholarship students, she hires Emma as a painting counselor -- and puts her in Dogwood Cabin with three teenage campers. Eventually, they also disappear, and Emma's truthfulness and mental health, then and now, is called into question. Flashbacks to her first stay at Nightingale and many games of Two Truths and A Lie show Emma to be a most unreliable narrator. Sager strikes some false notes with his summer camp setting, which is more like the camps I knew back in the day than those circa 2003. One of his supposedly big revelations is no surprise, but a later one is, as was the case with Final Girls. In the end, Sager proves adept with campfire smoke and mirrors.
from On a Clear Day I Can Read Forever
3.5 stars

Wow!! This book kept me guessing and in the edge of my seat the entire time. This is my first book by Riley Sagan and it don’t be my last. I have already purchased the Final Girls and cannot wait to dive in! The forrest / woods setting was perfectly fleshed out and completely added to the creeptastic feel of the suspense. It’s not very often that I can read an entire thriller and get to the ending and have the whole thing turn around. I totally didn’t see that ending coming until I got to the sentence I which the story turned.

Thirteen-year-old Emma Davis is sent to an all rich summer camp and is forced to leave early when her bunkmates all vanish. Fifteen years later, 28 and still struggling with her demons, Emma is invited back to the camp for its reopening, as an art instructor. She reluctantly agrees, desperate for answers and closure.

Like with Final Girls, I found this book extremely enjoyable and read it in a single day. But, I have to say, I enjoyed Final Girls a little bit more. But this one was filled with tons of plot and good twists that you want from a thriller. I could definitely see me recommending this to fellow readers. The way the plot is told is very unique, not only from the present and past perspectives of Emma, but there are parts where its told in an entirely new perspective like being told what she experiences, but as if you are Emma. It's very cool.

"There's something worse than death...not knowing."

Artist Emma Davis has spent the last 15 years haunted by the disappearance of 3 of her cabin mates while they were at summer camp. Exhaustive searches revealed no hint of what happened to the teenagers. Now at age 28, she's been invited back to Camp Nightingale as an instructor. She decides to accept the offer in hopes that she can undo some of the damage she did back then -- because there were several things she lied about at the time. This time she's determined to find out what happened to Vivian, Natalie and Allison. Once back at the camp ensconced in the same cabin where she'd stayed when she was 13, Emma finds that she is still under a cloud of suspicion -- that's why there is a motion sensor camera trained right on the door to Dogwood. Emma knows that she really didn't have anything to do with whatever happened to those girls...

Told in past/present narrative style through Emma's voice at 13 and at 28, the events are slowly revealed which made me very impatient to get to the denouement and conclusion. Emma is a character that I never identified with and she is constantly scrutinizing all the secondary characters for hints of guilt or involvement. She suffers from hallucinations and paranoia while also acknowledging that she has never told the truth about certain things surrounding the relationship she had with the 3 girls who vanished. The family that owns the camp also comes under suspicion. And then there's the fact that the man made lake on the property actually might be concealing a secret. Lots of teen angst and drama and a mystery that drug on a bit too long. I had a bit of a problem with the ending and definitely issues with Emma.

This is the second book I've read by this author, and this had some similarities to the first in writing style and tone. I'm not a fan of the past-present structure, but I do prefer reading an adult perspective rather than that of teenager voice. The book didn't have that "can't put it down" vibe for me, but I admit that it can be difficult for a story to keep me fully engaged at times.

Thank you to NetGalley and Dutton for this e-book ARC to read and review.

Wow. That was incredible. The Last Time I Lied is the second novel from Riley Sager and he truly outdid his first effort. The storyline keeps you hooked throughout with the mystery of what happened to the missing girls fifteen years ago. A mystery that keeps you guessing all the way to the very last pages. Each time you think you know what happened, Sager throws another delicious twist your way.

I read A LOT, but I am by no means a fast reader. I’m not sure what it is about Riley Sager’s books, but I read his first book (Final Girls) and this book in less than four days. Finishing his books this quick means they have caught my attention so much that I couldn’t put the book down. To me, this means I am reading a really good book.

I was unsure what to expect when I started The Last Time I Lied. I heard great things about it and enjoyed Sager’s first book. From the first page, I was hooked. I constantly found myself wanting to know what had happened in Emma’s past and what was going to happen now that she was back at Camp Nightingale.

The setting of The Last Time I Lied is my favorite part of this book. A camp is the perfect setting for a thriller being released in the summer. Surrounded by woods in the heat of summer brings all the creepy feels. Add missing girls and hallucinations and you get one chilling read!

The Last Time I Lied is a lighter suspense read that will leave you looking over your shoulder after every chapter. Sager’s second book is totally different than his first one in the best way possible. Readers who liked The Broken Girls by Simone St. James will enjoy The Last Time I Lied.